Just a spoonful of sugary drink confusion




Exaggerated and “emotion-raising” statements







Solids versus liquids






Sugar on the brain and addiction








What about dose?






Making the medicine to go down






Update – 5-17-13 – The videos from the ASN session have just become available, so here they all are for your enjoyment (by order of appearance):

Published by David Despain, MS, CFS


29 thoughts on “Just a spoonful of sugary drink confusion

  1. The same could be said about all epidemiological studies/papers on dietary fat, red meat, whole grains, vegetarian and vegan diets, cholesterol, statins and all the rest. There’s bias and agenda behind each one, whether it’s conscious or not. Follow the money.


    1. I was also interested in seeing Dr. Allison’s featured list, which included this RCT with surprise surprise “No Effect of Replacing Sugar Sweetened Beverages with Water on Weight Loss in Women.” http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/27/1_MeetingAbstracts/855.10?sid=cc7ce292-e797-4423-8227-aea88ac989ce

      Subjects compensated with calories from other sources. Goes to show that, as is the case with studying effects of other foods on body weight, obesity can be more complex than thought.


      1. My experience has been you have to cut out “all” white refined sugars to effect weight loss with success … it will literally melt off.

  2. Gary Fettke has said you have undeclared conflict of interest in this field. Could you confirm or deny this. I note that you quote Dr Rippe who has consulted for the Corn refiners association without revealing his conflict of interest .

    1. Julian, I’m glad you asked me directly as opposed to believing whatever people have said. I want to be absolutely clear that I’ve never received compensation in any shape or form from the CRA, Pepsico, Coca-Cola, or Monsanto for that matter. I was careful to note in my article that the event was sponsored by CRA and that the Rippe/Alonso research received CRA funding; however, you’re right in that I didn’t clarify Rippe’s consulting relationship. I’ve corrected that in the article now, so thanks. My own conflcts of interested are listed in my “about” section; I realize that previously I had it as a bullet point, but now I’ve separated it into its own section. Ironically, the nutrition-focused companies I list are of the kind that are anti-HFCS and anti-sugar (although they do use some “natural” sugars) and usually are rallying against the ones above like the CRA. As for myself and I hope you’ll agree, as I write, I am simply trying to make sense of all the science myself as I go along. Personally, I have never as a nutritionist recommended sugary drinks to anyone because of their empty calories. However, I do confess to enjoying the occasional Dr. Pepper of root beer float.

      1. Then try doing one about all the Bromides in everything Including Asthma meds. They only destroy the Thyroid and we all get Fat Slow and Stupid.
        The History goest back to the 40’s and the US army Knew.
        SO why change the Breads and Pizza doughs etc in the 80’s?

    2. Julian has taken up the challenge (led by his guru) to try and find any conflict of interest (even belonging to an association that has sponsorships) in order to totally dismiss anything that anyone ever says without having to read it. Whether one is the author of a meta-analysis or even reporting on that meta-analysis – if Julian can find a conflict – he thinks he has debunked ALL of the content.

      His guru David Gillespie has one of the worst of these to his credit (the fact that poisoning the well is regularly employed in law but not in science is lost on both of them) – if you can find some small industry link, you can discredit – see Attack of the chocolatier – http://www.raisin-hell.com/2010/01/attack-of-chocolatier.html

      Julian also regularly asks for evidence (which he isn’t interested in, he’s just looking to confirm his own experience, especially regarding fructose) and thus has developed a reputation for asking questions and then disappearing when someone goes to the effort of replying. Don’t waste your time David with his veiled accusation!

  3. I point to an increasingly common likelihood that medication has weight gain as common side effects with the rising obesity rate. Blaming sugar is silly. When you eat foods, your body will chemically process it into sugar so you can metabolize it! The only problem with sugar is that one, you will become malnourished if that’s all you eat. Two, it’s very difficult to control portion sizes of sugar. Sugar doesn’t make you feel full in the same way as a ham sandwich or a bowl of steamed broccoli and rice.

    1. Agreed. I had no weight problems until a doctor prescribed something with weight gain as a listed side effect. Without changing my diet/exercise habits, I was gaining 10 pounds a month, 50 pounds total. Adding insult to injury, the prescription didn’t do what it was supposed to. Nearly 10 years later, I still haven’t been able to lose the weight; the metabolic change is apparently permanent.

  4. If sugary drinks and food cause obesity and bad health, then I would be very large and very unhealthy. I am 55 years old and have consumed sugar at a ridiculous rate since my early teens and I feel healthy and can still run with ease. I think the sugar scare is a lot of nonsense.

    1. Same here! I’m 54, and eat sweets as if they were 3 of 4 of the ‘basic food groups’, yet people tell me I look 20 years younger, I have no weight problems, I walk as fast as most people jog, AND… my Doc just told me last month that all the blood work, etc, shows my health to be akin to someone half my age. (Did I mention I drink cream?)

  5. Jeez, that CRA doesn’t give up easily when it comes to peddling that HFCS SHITE, does it? These are the things I know for sure as a type 2 diabetic:
    1) Comparing a refined sugar product to natural fructose-containing fruits is absurd. Fructose in fruits is sequestered in little fibrous parcels which limit the rate at which the sugar is presented to the digestion. Consumption of orange: no real plasma glucose bump. Drinking orange juice: dramatic increase in blood sugar. In the same way, HFCS-sweetened beverages just like beverages sweetened with cane sugar will result in an unhealthysurge in blood sugar promoting AGE chemicals and sticky vessel plaques.
    2) Even more horrid than that, fructose is a monosaccharide which has been shown to have the ability to infiltrate cells WITHOUT an insulin gatekeeper. This the reason that pure fructose seems to raise the serum insulin level less than glucose. Contrary to dietary sugar reduction, which decreases insulin secretion, the fructose effect here is NOT A DESIRED EFFECT FOR DIABETICS. Excessive levels of sugars within the cell lead to high levels of intracellular Advanced Glycation Endproducts and Mitochondrial damage.
    3) Still trying to sell this crap as “corn sugar”? The CRA conveniently forgets that we already have natural corn sugar. It has NO fructose in it, and I guess it isn’t nearly as sweet as sucrose, which is why they need to chemically modify it to contain fructose. Creating markets for human consumption of chemically modified corn sugar diverts some of the sugar away from corporate animal farming, and diverting some excess sugar away from the livestock business would have been good actually for animals raised on corn mulls if they weren’t raised ass-deep in their own excrement,by pretty much the same corporate entities trying to peddle this crap to us.

  6. I read an article recently about a teenage girl who’s only diet for many years, (I don’t quite recall accurately but it was something between 8 to 13 years) was ramen noodles; the store bought dehydrated in either a styrofoam cup or plastic bag. In that case, the professional commenting on the consequences said she would have major health problems and a sorter life expectancy if I am recalling correctly. My question is, even though she would be getting the caloric intake needed to survive, what would be the consequences of not having a more diverse diet, with the additional assumption of if someone had that diet but supplemented a multivitamin daily? More specifically, would the multivitamin compensate for any of the dietary needs that were not fulfilled with the ramen-only diet? If anyone can offer any insight I would greatly appreciate it.

  7. I am not an MD nor am I a dietician (sp?). But try this, make a gallon of lemonade with just enough sugar to balance the tartness. measure the sugar. If you are working outside in the south, add a small pinch of iodized salt. Noting how much sugar you added, look at a can of your favorite sugar sweetened soft drink. they are between 150 and 200 calories each. restaurant sugar packets are about 18 calories each. approximately 10 packets per can. a lot more than you put in the lemonade. I would wager.

  8. Sugar is an easy target. Just like one of the causes of obesity in America. Here is a correlation for you. What states have the highest rates of obesity? I’ll guess it’s in the Midwest. The mid-west had another problem in the past that caused obesity. Way in the past. Here is the correlation. I’ll bet that in the same areas with high obesity rates, there is also a high rate of depression. I have been working on a study for a few years now and have found something interesting. The big obesity problem in America kicked off at about the same time as all the studies on how bad salt is. Everyone was told to cut down on salt intake. The one thing everyone forgot is salt is one of the only sources of iodine in some people’s diets, especially in the Midwest. As researchers you would think that if a population became deficient in iodine, there would be an increase in goiters. The one thing everyone forgets. Iodine is a halogen. Fluorine is a halogen. America added fluorine to drinking water. When you are deficient on iodine fluorine can bind on the same position of T-4, and T-3. The only problem with this is that your body has no ability to break the fluorine bond. It is too strong. This means that there is thyroid hormone that your body cannot use (Plaque). Fluorine wouldn’t really be a problem at the low levels of 4ppm in drinking water, except for one thing. In the 90s the president signed a law forcing all beverage companies to use fluoridated water. That’s another argument all together, so back to my point. I will bet that iodine deficiency has more to do with the obesity problem than sugars. Also iodine deficiency is a cause for depression, stunted growth, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, fungal infections, immune deficiencies, and a multitude of other ailments. I found this correlation while researching veterans of modern warfare. Many war veterans coming home from combat zones, since the Gulf War, are suffering from severe anxiety, chronic depression, and multiple pain syndromes, at much higher rates than veterans from past wars. I asked myself, why? What did veterans from the past have, that today’s veterans don’t. That was pretty easy to figure out since I am a Gulf War veteran. In the wars for the last hundred year’s right up until the Gulf War, veterans used iodine. They had salt tablets for cramps, iodine tablets for water purification, and they used iodine to treat small wounds. Now we send troops overseas for years on end with no ability to get iodine. They eat MRE’s for the entire deployment, and are told to cut salt intake. The only time they get iodine is if they get shot, or get surgery, because the doctors use it. I wondered why injured veterans came home with less emotional problems or chronic pain conditions. I tracked it down to iodine deficiency.

    1. Your statement on problems associated with iodine deficiency and the history of iodine with military deployment is very interesting. I had thought that Gulf War syndrome may be more than one syndrome, with a variety exposures as potential culprits: depleted uranium, pesticides to kill sand fleas used to the point of dripping off the canvas tents, the blowing up of a depot of chemical weapons, the required series of vaccinations given in rapid succession, and the breakdown of aspartame in diet sodas that were left on pallets in the desert heat to be chilled just before consumption, with formaldehyde being a resulting toxic in the soda. I hadn’t heard of iodine deficiency causing this raft of ailments, only goiter. Now I’m wondering of the packaging on the MRE’s when exposed to heat may taint the food inside, plus perhaps some of the preservatives used could be injurious to health, particularly after repeated exposure to temperatures as high as 140 degrees.

      1. Originally I thought GWI had something to do with the Hep B vaccine they gave us just before the ground war. Because after we received it so many of us got sick that they ordered the entire 1st Marine division to start taking cipro 500mg X2 daily. many of us were showing symptoms of encephalitis right after the Hepatitis B vaccine.

  9. David,

    I’m late to the party but I really must comment. This was a frustrating read. If anything it simply illustrates the limitations of depending on small-scale studies, focusing on interesting details, and missing the big picture.

    Citing one study about 9 overweight women (did they already have an unhealthy relationship to food?) says NOTHING about the large-scale, population-wide, epidemiological consequences of increased sugar consumption, available at little energy cost, or financial cost – and uncoupled from any nutrient value!

    Regarding the appetite-suppressing qualities of glucose….I wish I had known that when I binged consistently on sugary, fatty foods. I would have said to myself, “Gee, I’m not supposed to be doing this. The glucose is supposed to suppress my appetite. Where did that 6th eclair go?”

    Yes, some people are actually capable of eating that much sugar (and fat). Perhaps those of you who don’t just don’t get it.

    I do agree that using catchphrases such as “sugar is poison” and “sugar kills” and “sugar IS addictive” (as opposed to “can be”) is distracting and unhelpful.

    But I’m a little tired of hearing the phrase “it’s more complicated” used to obscure some simple, home truths.

    1. Diana,

      I appreciate your thoughts on this. The epidemiological studies have already received a lot of coverage in the media. David Allison went through many of them at this event. However, as reported in the post, he pointed out that these studies show only weak correlations with obesity and chronic disease.

      RCTs are necessary to determine causation. And those appear to find that there’s little evidence that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages is detrimental in comparison to other sources of carbs/calories.

      That is not to say that sugar-sweetened drinks have played no role in causing obesity in this country. On the contrary, I believe Richard Mattes’s evidence is pretty convincing in finding that the pattern in which we drink these clear beverages frequently leads to overconsumption of calories.

      However, I do believe that there is a case for stopping with the anti-sugar/anti-SSB hysteria and presenting arguments on both sides in a balanced way. I feel like my post attempts to do that and that, from a nutritionist’s perspective, David Jenkins’s addition that we use sugar in a way that helps improve our nutrition is important to consider.


  10. blah blah blah … my third eye tells me HCFS is bad without having even think about science. They’ve taken a natural product and chemically modified it so they could make more money. Simple as that. There’s no extensive testing done on either side of the fence nor could there be because of the all the factors involved. It’s impossible to say with certainty what this chemically altered product will do to every human body that consumes it over an infinite amount of time. Nature had already taken care of producing some sweetener for us. It’s called natural sugars. They’re natural because they developed naturally alongside us and there was no money involved. It’s quite simple.

  11. In regards to the response to Diana, the notion that these sugary drinks contributes to excess calories is likely the most important point. As a diabetic (a little under, not overweight) I find that consuming carbohydrates of any kind will increase blood glucose levels, it’s just a matter of how long it takes to digest. Drinks, boiled foods like white rice and spagetti digest very quickly compared to raw foods and whole grains, and perhaps some fruits which have the fiber as discussed. What is really more confusing to any reader is that the negative opinions or those shading toward discrediting the anti sugar arguments are the lead in to the more accurate and real liklihood that there is good cause for decreasing sugar in our diets by a large factor. Does anyone, including the author, question the sponsorship of the -what was it, a symposium? by the Corn Refiners Association. This sort of discussion should be taken with more than a grain of salt.

  12. Gee, you mean what my award-winning doctor has been telling me, about molecules of complex carbohydrates possibly damaging the capillaries in my eyes and kidneys is a bunch of nonsense? I wonder if I should believe him, or a so-called researcher from a state that depends heavily on sugar production.

    Chuck: You claim “there’s bias and agenda behind each one, whether it’s conscious or not,” but with out knowing each one, how would you know? Speak for yourself–which is what I think you’re doing (i.e., projecting). And when you say “follow the money,” you can’t just glibly assume that what motivates you applies to everyone else, especially in science. Ever hear of a person deciding to major in science in order to get rich? Once again, those who’ve pursued careers in order to get rich are projecting, assuming that scientists are like them when they aren’t. Sure, scientists go after grants. That’s what they have to do to survive in unbiased environments. Everyone has to justify their existence at some level. There’s no escaping that reality. The problem scientists have is that biased, politically-minded people are trying to take even survival away from them.

  13. Sugar does not cause diabetes and is not unhealthy for diabetics. As with everything else there needs to be moderation. Anything in excess will kill you. Thanks for this article. It is nice to get some nutritional truth, because there is very little anywhere.

Leave a Reply to Glen Whittle Cancel reply


WordPress.com Logo


Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: